Month: September 2003

final_fantasy_x-2_intro.mpg (51.3MB). That is all.

Did you ever want your own cool-sounding Metal Gear-style call-sign? As the introduction to this Fox Hound name generator says, "you don’t have to be Hideo Kojima to slam random nouns together like drunken virgins at an orgy." Had I found this a few days ago it would have given me a pretty comical LAN game name. But I didn’t, so I’m sticking with Zombie Jesus. Or Mother Shabubu. Or Aunty Christ. Maybe I should run a poll?

The true spirit of blogging is exemplified by two things. Commenting on the state of the internet, or parts of it; and whining about anything that crosses your mind. So in a neat fusion I present: Giving Out About Idiots And Their Email (part of an on-going series). In the last three days I’ve received a total of almost two hundred identical emails to a single address. They weigh in at a hefty (for dial-up) 150k each. That’s 30MB of virus in three days. I guess that someone is still hopeful that the two-hundred-and-first will convince me that it’s actually from Microsoft.

It may seem like I’m beating a dead (trojan) horse, but what can convince you to run a program that you got, out of the blue ether, in an email? Hell, even if it was from Microsoft, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a pity viruses aren’t as destructive as they used to be. If all the idiots had their systems fried, clueful users wouldn’t be bombarded with ineffectual trojans, and I’d be finished that download of the Final Fantasy X-2 intro video.

Random stumbling around the web: I happened upon an old bookmarks file from a disused Mozilla profile that contained a link to philringnalda.com. This is odd because, although I have an idea who phil ringnalda is, I have no recollection of having bookmarked his site. I guess that’s what bookmarks are for though; not having to remember things.

Via philringnalda, the LJ Times. This is a congelation of all that’s bad in writing. As the headline reads, "WTF, OMG, LOL". It’s an aggregation of LiveJournal entries, layed out as a serious newspaper. The design needs a little work to make it look more newspapery. For another example, see Live Journal Washinton Post. LOL!

There is something quite terribly wrong with rising at seven and not getting home until six, when the day between consists of two lectures. I’m beginning to dislike Tuesdays.

Gamespot is featuring a preview of Final Fantasy X-2, which is aparently set for an "early December" 2003 release. This is a US release schedule, so I wouldn’t expect to see it in European shops this side of Christmas. I think we can expect an early spring release as usual, just in time to interfere with finals. Perhaps that’s why they call it Final Fantasy.

The preview doesn’t give much away, unfortunately, but what little can be gleaned from it follows. X-2 is a sequel to FFX, as we already knew. The principal protagonist is FFX‘s Yuna. Rikku is also a playable character. Other FFX characters only appear briefly as NPCs. The gameplay sounds to be less linear than the original, with the world map accessible far earlier in the game. The battle system has changed, but still features a sphere motif. Alarmingly, it seems that there are only three playable characters. I would think this is needlessly restrictive. I expect you’ll join with me in hoping that I’ve simply mis-interpreted that claim.

We’re promised improved graphics and "gorgeously detailed CG movies". The animators have redesigned any areas from the first game that are revisited. Gaming Horizon has some Screenshots, aswell as the box art. I have to say that Gun-toting Yuna in hotpants is indicative of an enthralling game.

As promised, here are the results from the Rare Entries contest that I described in an earlier entry. I came twenty-sixth out of forty-five entrants. There are no prizes for pointing out that these results were available when I posted my last blissfully content-free entry.

After the embarassment of having to admit the necessity for a placeholder entry you might be supposed to expect a little flair from me this time around. Unfortunately fate and irony together conspire against us. It is ironic that I am bound not to discuss the first somewhat interesting event after an extended period of bored coasting. My silence is to protect the innocent, and the innocent until proven guilty.

It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Well deep breath then, and on to removing all doubt. I’m going to level with you that the primary purpose of this entry is not to pass on some wonderfully entertaining bite-sized chunks of modern micro-culture, nor is it to inspire or confound you with strange new paradigms. It’s to get rid of the annoying ‘Out of Cheese’ error that appears on the front page when there have been no entries in the last week.

I’ll avoid any more than a simple mention of the release of Mozilla Thunderbird version 0.2, since becoming excited about a 0.1 revision to a mail client is reminiscent of Steve Martin shouting that "THE NEW PHONEBOOKS ARE HERE!"

As an admittedly contrived segue from the mailnews client, speaking of email and newsgroups, I recently rediscovered an old haunt of mine, rec.puzzles (Google Groups). The reason I mention this is that I want to draw attention, what little I might generate, to the Rare Entries Contest. The concept is simple and compelling. You must answer ten questions, but the aim is give correct answers that other people will not give. For each correct answer you give, you score a number of points equal to the number of other people who gave the same answer. For a wrong answer you get a penalty. The aim is to have the lowest score (ideally only ten points, corresponding to all correct answers with no-one giving the same answers as you.)

I’m particularly interested to see the answers given to the questions with limited possible correct answers. Take the Nobel Prize question ("Name one of the five original categories of Nobel Prize.") for example. This is where the second guessing comes in. The results will be posted soon so, unless I do embarrassingly badly, I’ll tell you how I got on.